Toddlers Helping

(Crappy Baby naming update! The people have spoken. 52% voted to keep it the same. A majority! Which is fine because I’m super lazy and now I don’t have to do anything. Of course, there were even better name ideas in the comments that weren’t in the poll so the poll kinda sucked. And few wise people suggested I ask the kids and I have no idea why that didn’t occur to me. So I asked them and they freaked out. “NOOOOOOO! Keep them the same! Don’t change our cartoon names! You can’t!” So there you go. Of course later, Crappy Baby said he might like to be called Crappy Pickle when he turns four and “grows up”. So we may revisit this again if he becomes uncomfortable with the “baby” part of his name at some point. For now, ‘Crappy Baby’ remains. Thanks for all your votes & ideas, that was fun!)

Now the real post…

Crappy Baby is in a helping stage.

Of course I want to encourage him to help. To guide him and show him how to do things. To boost his confidence.

This helping stage comes hand-in-hand with greater independence. It is really the same thing as the early “Do It Self!!!” type independence only with better language skills but just as many tantrums.

Independence is good!

One form of independence I long for is toilet needs independence. Aka – not having to wipe anyone else’s ass. Can you imagine? Can you imagine that at some point we will only have our own butts to worry about wiping? Wow. One can dream.

I’m close. So close, I can taste it. Except not taste it because that is a horrible choice of expression for this topic.

Anyway, part of me is thrilled that Crappy Baby has reached this helping stage.

But.

A toddler “helping” is like whatever the opposite of helping is.

Like with cooking.

Is he helping me make cookies?

No. He making it more difficult for me to make cookies.

And with cleaning!

Is he helping me clean?

No, he is making it more difficult for me to clean.

But how can I resist? How can I say no to his offer of help?

I can’t.

He is just too adorable.

Plus, I have to let him do this stuff so he can get better at it and one day actually be helpful.

Course I’m pretty sure once he reaches that level of skill he will no longer have any interest in performing most of these tasks. Just like I don’t. “Yay! Sweeping! Look how good I am at sweeping now!” is something I’ve never said.

Anyway, those are just examples. The point of this post is actually this story…

So Crappy Baby is in the bathroom pooping.

I know he is pooping because both of my kids still tell me when they have to poop. As in “MAMA! I HAVE TO POOP!” Even if they are in the same room as Crappy Papa and I’m across the house. I must be found and given a status update on their bowel movements. Always.

He is taking a long time. I can hear the sound of the potty chair bowl insert being taken out. What is he doing?

I open the door and see him standing there with the potty chair bowl hovered above the big toilet.

The diaper sprayer is in his hand.

I’ve mentioned the diaper sprayer before in this post. About how it turns into a water laser if you turn it on too high.

How it takes a delicate touch to adjust it to the right pressure level.

Crappy Baby does not have a delicate touch.

It’s like one of those nightmares where I try to run but I can barely move or the one when I am driving a car but the brakes are barely working and I can’t make a full stop.

In slow motion, I yell “Nooooooooooo!” and lunge forward to grab the sprayer.

Too late.

I lunge forward right INTO the explosion. Face level.

And since I was yelling “Nooooooo!” my mouth was wide open.

But this was worth it right? Someday, someday he’ll handle all of this on his own. Right?

I am sitting here avoiding work by reading your blog and laughing so hard that I may have to go lie down. Sorry. But I am really, really glad my kids are of the age where I worry about whether they are getting their legal-age friends to buy them beer and don’t worry about getting sprayed with poop.

ewww! We got a new toilet seat that has the toddler/kid size one built in so that they can go on the toilet and there is not potty bowl to empty. expect in case of emergency when they both need to go at the same time.

Oh. My. Gosh. I laughed out loud. Mostly because I am *just barely* on the other side of this stage (you will get there!) and also because I just checked on my 5 year old before I sat down to read this, who was in the bathroom singing and I asked him if by chance he’d taken my laptop with him. And he said “Yes, but don’t worry, my bottom is covering the entire whole!” So, whew.

I had my son vomit into my open mouth once. I was laughing, holding him over me, he was laughing, we were playing, and then “bllurrp-bleaaahhhh” barf in my mouth. UGH.

For the record, it wasn’t long ago that I was in the “OMG will you just wipe your own ass already?!?!” stage. They finally learned, just after they turned 5. But now it’s “Mama, can you check to see if my butt hole has no poop on it?” Top volume. Every time. SO I sympathize. And without humor, we’d be crying.

The good news is that a simple glass of any kind of alcohol will kill any germs left in your mouth. Yeah, that’s it… I drink to get rid of germs. 😛

Hahahahahahahaha, oh man you got me with the yelling to check if the butthole is clean! It’s one of those moments where you stop and think -this is not what I pictured my life would be like- before you go in and putting your childs head between your knees so you can properly bend them over and make sure it’s all clear….

Cassie-there is now lemonade all over my screen. No parent can forget the putting your child between your knees to bend the over for the all clear-ahhhh-the memories-so glad my kids are OUT of this stage (the oldest is 18 and the youngest is 4 so JUST out of this phase)

Thank you for helping me realize I am having a good day. & I already cleaned poop off the carpet. Good day still: oh definitely. & you have ALL my sympathy. All of it. Also: I kind of want to vomit now.

Oh wow. That made me shout out loud and cover my mouth! I’m glad I live in the UK where we’ve never heard of a diaper sprayer (well I haven’t). My 2 yr old likes to take her full potty to the toilet. She won’t let go if you try and take it off her which can lead to a scary tug of war situation where you have to let go really gently to avoid getting covered. Ah the joys.

Yep, dear son (now 3 1/2) went through the tug-of-war I-wanna-do-it stage too (for the record, I never did wind up with poop all over me, but let’s say there has been some spatter). Lately though he’s been letting me put it all in the toilet, which is a mix of relief and annoyance. Maybe it’s time for us to put the seat on the toilet so we can avoid it altogether.

My 22 month old boy is sloooooowly learning to go before he goes. He knows when he goes, and knows its gotta be wiped off. He poos, grabs a new diaper and a toy, goes into the bathroom and lays out the towel himself, lays on it and yells, “POOOOP, MIITII! Glean schtinki!*” on Repeat One.
On the rare occasions when he lets us know beforehand and wants to go potty, he will be HIGHLY offended if I even mention him sitting on the potty chair. I have to come and help him on the ‘real’ toilet, because he thinks he has to go on the big toilet like Tädi, Muetti, his sister and the cat. (Yes, our cat can and will go on the people toilet. He can’t flush though. I guess it’s like having an eternal teenager? The plus of not having to deal with litter and litter boxes outweighs this minor problem by far, though!!))
I remember toilet training our firstborn (now a proud 4 3/4th year old) and the terrors we had when she wanted to empty her potty herself. Or how she used to jump up so quickly after going, that the potty was still kinda stuck to her butt and would get flung into the air, bounce, and empty the contents in a nice, wide, messy radius. Not fun. Little man should keep going on the big can. I can deal with constantly holding him in balance better than cleaning up 2 sq. yards of waste from hardwood floors and upholstery.

Oh no!! I am so sorry! I thought it was bad when I go to check the back of my diaper and stick my finger in a surprise. Next time that happens, I will smile knowingly and remember that it could be worse!

Oh!!!! I am at work and am not succeeding in stifling laughter!!!! You poor thing. I’ve never heard of the diaper sprayer, but now I think I’ll not get one, ever. (Our boy is toilet training now, too…)

Wow, I do this to myself frequently (the sprayer suddenly goes too hard and I splat the potty contents all over me and the floor). I have the best touch with it in the house, but even then it’s a crapshoot whether it will come out too hard or not. Crapshoot. Or crapsplatter.

First, we are in that exact “helping” phase with my 2.5 year old. I actually found myself saying, once she went down for her nap yesterday, “Oh good, she’s sleeping! I can SWEEP!”

Second, it’s like your boys know when it’s time for a new blog post, so they do something postworthy. (or maybe this happened a while ago and you just re-created it for the blog now. but I prefer to believe the former.)

Tears running down my face. My coworkers now think I’m crazy I was laughing so hard. Thankfully, we detached our diaper sprayer before this ever happened, not that I didn’t manage to do it to myself a few times. But at least my mouth wasn’t open.

laughing so hard! i can see it all. we had a diaper sprayer for a while and they are high pressure!
i’m glad i’m not the only one with huge “helping” disasters.
this is the point where you ask for a small holiday sans kids…

I’m laughing so hard that tears are streaming down my face. I’m sorry for laughing at your misfortune, but it’s only because I can relate to this so well. Keep up the great work. Love all your stories.

We’re in the “will you please finally poop on the potty” faze, so your post made me long for the day that my son will come find me to tell me he has to use the potty. 🙂

He too, loves to help clean and cook. We have a dust buster, so I let him use that to vacuum up the dirt I’ve just swept. I sweep it together and he sucks it up…he loves it and it keep him from re-distributing the dirt.

My 16 mo is in this “helping” stage already. He “helps” me vacuum by running right where I need to go, “helps” me close doors (when they’re only being closed to keep him out…), “helps” me with the clean laundry by taking it out of the basket and throwing it all over the floor when I set it down for 2 seconds…you get the idea. And this is precisely why we don’t have a diaper sprayer. I laughed so hard I almost woke my son up. 🙂

Re. Laundry – teach your kid to help you. Ask him for the item you want to hang. Make it easy to identify, e.g. the item on top. Teach him to give it to you when _you_ are ready and to wait for your signal, e.g. “I’m not ready! I’m not ready! Ok I’m ready for the red socks now.”

Ive always told my parents in law that I would gladly take care of them if they couldn’t live at their own home anymore so I’m pretty sure that wiping baby bottoms would soon be followed by old geiser bottoms! I think the baby butts are the lesser of two assholes here!

One time my daughter (who is 29 months older than my son), decided to “help” him wipe after pooping since I was doing laundry in the basement. I went upstairs to find him bent over at the waist, her face very close to his behind as she examined and helped wipe. There was poop everywhere. Seriously. All over the bathroom. All over them. Some on toilet paper in the toilet but mostly not. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or dump them both in a bath of GermEx. When I think back on it now I laugh…

My kiddo is just a few months older than Crappy Baby, so i am right there with ya.

I have never had so many discussions about poop in my entire life. He likes to list the characteristics of each poop and speculate on the reasons behind them (color, heft, consistency), and also to see what items each poop resembles (“this one looks like a chicken wing! this one looks like an ice cream cone!”).

He also thinks poop is a pretty funny topic in general. He found the Voice Recorder app on my phone and it’s full of little messages now – “i love you, Mommy/Daddy” interspersed with “POOPIE! POOPIE SHOWER! POOP PIE!”

Oh.. my.. gosh.. just reading this gave my gag reflex a go, not to mention your drawing… aaaand not to mention my vivid pregnancy induced imagination… *shudders* I sure hope I never have the pleasure of experiencing this level of “help”!!

My daughter is 20 months and potty trained, but mostly still breastfed. She sometimes climbs on the toilet by herself. The other day she didn’t make on time and had explosive poop while she was climbing. It was like a poop grenade, the whole wall under the sink was covered in poop.

I am glad the names stuck, although I thought Crappy Kid and Crappy Toddler would have been a way to make the step up in age while maintaining the generic-ness (Crappy Boy instead of Crappy Actual Name) that makes how this blog reads so funny.

It’s even worse when this sort of thing happens in a daycare setting…you know, with someone elses child’s poop in your mouth. I witnessed the tab of a runny diaper get stuck and then suddenly unstick, and fling poop all over a teacher’s face and in her mouth.

I can’t say that I’ve had as bad of an explosion as this, but my 3 year old has also tried to help with the sprayer. We decided to leave it in the “off” position, but that only lasted a week or so because it was a pain to keep adjusting it with every use. Thankfully he hasn’t tried to “help” with it lately…

I had Pee Monday (toddler pees her pants and walks all over the house leaving footprints AND preschooler soaked the wall and floor around the toilet with his personal “sprayer”) and Poop Wednesday (toddler pulls down pants and a shower of turd balls bounce out AND another toddler “wiped” herself, resulting in a nasty nasty skid mark that got “panties stuck in butt” and required my assistance)…so this post made me feel so much better. I have not yet experienced the taste of poo…but if I do I will remember the above suggestion of alcohol!

My youngest is 2 (still on the little side of 2) and one of his favourite things to do is pull a chair up to the kitchen counter as he says “helping!” And he’s not much of a talker, so it’s extra cute that he says “helping”. But it’s soooooo not helpful when I’m doing dishes or trying to fry pepperoni. I don’t mind so much when it’s making cookies – except then he wanted to help me make meatloaf. I looked away for something and when I looked back I think he had tasted the raw meat mixture, since he’d only ever mixed cookies before and that mixture is yummy. Ooops.

Oh and he’s just starting to use the potty and likes to dump it into the toilet on his own. Even if I’m sitting on the toilet because he’d told me “Muma potty!” So far I’ve been quick enough that he hasn’t dumped pee on me yet.

Once I dropped the insert from my daughter’s potty chair into the toilet. Its contents included her first pee of the morning (so a lot and very concentrated) in addition to a great deal of fresh, not overly firm poop. It fell, hit the edge of the toilet, and shot pee and poop into corners of the room that I didn’t know existed. Also all over ME.

So I did what any good mother would do– I freaked out and called my husband, who came home from work and bleached the bathroom while I took a shower in disinfectant.

My daughter just gave up the potty chair a week and a half ago, and I may have danced and sung loudly as I carried it out to the trash. Now we’re working on wiping our own butt. It’s got to be pretty tough, you know? Her arms barely reach back there . . .

Funniest post. Ever. That said, there should be a disclaimer at the top to warn readers to not read this while eating, especially bananas (don’t ask). And as someone with older children, yep, once the skill is acquired they no longer want to help. Sigh.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh gosh! My daughter is almost 3, and we are slowly toilet training her. She goes to the potty whenever she feels like being a “big girl princess”, I have to be there at all times, but she asks for “privacy” so I move away, either two steps down the stairs or to her room, but I’m so afraid of doing so, because recently she tried to clean the potty bowl herselfy, and it is not helpful at all! I’d love to have disposable potties, rather than cleaning them hahahaha!

I was so hoping the story was going to fine you talking to Crappy Baby like someone talking a suicidal person off the edge in order to get him to put the sprayer down. Yuck! I’m so sorry for your unfortunate taste test.

On a different note, I am glad you are staying with the Crappy Baby name for now. I think it will be fun to read about him in a future book. Maybe after a second book he can change his name. He might want to if you include this story in a future book. =)

Did your husband come and check what the ruckus was all about? I ask because I could totally see this happening in my house and could see my husband walk in and then dry heave for a solid 3 minutes. That’s usually how he contributes to stinky, gross situations.

When I was potty training my son, we had him in underwear to try to get him used to pottying in the potty. He didn’t get it. Matter of fact, I had to send him to school to get potty trained. Anyway, this means that there was a great many accidents in his underwear. When poop happened, we would carefully remove the soiled garments, dump the offending poop into the potty, and then clean up. Well, my son decided he was going to help with this process one day without telling me that he’d had an accident. Next thing I know, he’s coming to me, poop all over his bare behind, and I hear the toilet filling up with water. “Um…where is your underwear?” “I pooped!” “Ok, so where is your underwear?” “I put the poop in the potty.” “Ok, so WHERE IS YOUR UNDERWEAR?” “In the potty!” “Oh dear lord, tell me you didn’t flush your underwear down the toilet!”
That was exactly what he had done. Thankfully, we seemed to have really good pipes and have never had any problems. But, boy was that a few tense weeks when I kept waiting for the toilet to back up.

Okay, maybe you need to remember that you can also let them help with you supervising at a safe distance so he will only spray himself in the face. Oh my god I’m so sorry. I hope you got to have whatever dinner you wanted with wine. Lots and lots of wine. To sterilize. And forget the whole incident.

We’ve just started the helping phase. DS at 27 months gets 25c for “helping” with the dishes or laundry. Maybe for sweeping too, but he isn’t very good at that at all. I also want a diaper sprayer, having switched back to cloth. Make that wanted, as this is a combination I hadn’t even imagined.

As for potty independence I am just hoping he shows interest before kindergarten. Otherwise I may have to home school.

I always shuddered when the kids asked to help me clean. So I bought those Swiffer duster things with the handle and that became their job when I was cleaning. Other than knocking things over, it actually worked and they felt like they were helping.

LMAO! Thanks for more poopy stories, even if they are never so funny when they happen to you…at least not right away.
My sons are the same age as yours, so I am often laughing at myself as well. A few times now, my one son’s poops were so hard that they clogged the toilet and the only way down was to cut them. I made my husband do that chore and he used one of my kitchen knives (!)…which one he refused to tell me because I would never use it again.

This is the funniest post I have read on any blog pretty much ever! We dont have a diaper sprayer but when my middle son was potty training he liked to rinse out his own potty chair bowl, too – In the sink…. only he frequently forgot to empty it in the toilet before he tried. Nothing quite like finding giant turdletts sitting there waiting for you the next time you go to brush your teeth…

I’m laughing-but only because it happened to you and not to me. If it were me, it might take a few more years before I could laugh at it. Since you are used to us laughing at your disasterous moments, I hope this translates to nothing but love from your adoring fans.
I also thought I’d let you know they never-and I do mean NEVER-grow out of the announcing their bowel functions phase. A couple months ago my 18 yr old son came over to “hang out” (translated it means letting me do his laundry for him while he eats all the food in the house) and as he got up from the couch he announced that he had to poop. I get that this is totally my own fault, that I drilled it into them when they were potty-training, “Come tell mommy when you have to poop!” but seriously? At 18 years, I don’t NEED to know anymore. LOL

… my sibling does the same at 18+, if only so everyone knows that the bathroom will be unusable for the next [XY] Minutes (and to use the other). Now I really wonder if this is a relict from constant parental requests during toddlerhood.

ACK! My boys do the same to me except it sounds like this: “mommmmmmmmy, come and wipe my buuuuuuuuutt!!!” Doesn’t matter if dad is in the bathroom with them, it’s MY job (sigh). Thank goodness I have only ever ate puke (stupid co-sleeping and puke only coming in the middle of the night) and never swollowed fecal!

Ohmy! i’m laughing so hard i can barely breathe! I’m so sorry though! I have been in the blissful non-butt wiping area of life now for 2 years… both my boys got the hang of it quickly or later wanted only daddy to help. But in about 4 months i will be back in that area again with number 3’s arrival… :'( it was nice while it lasted. You’ll get there though and you’ll just stand up one day and realize…”i don’t have to wipe poop!!” and do a happy dance. Do it in private though when you do it in public people stare LOL!

This timing of this post is impeccable! Just one hour ago, I sent my 3 year old to the bathroom for a potty break. He was quiet for a few minutes, and then I heard an odd scraping/brushing sound. I called from the kitchen, “What’s going on in there?” He replied, “Helping you sweep, Mama!” I found him “sweeping” the clean bathroom floor with the wet toilet brush that I had used to scrub the bowl just 10 minutes prior. I’m just grateful he didn’t decide to “mop” by dipping the brush into the toilet water first. Yeah, “helping” is definitely not the correct word.

And I flip out every time one of my kids merely sits on the toilet and sprays the diaper sprayer on something innocuous. Like the floor. I shall not freak out any longer.

I finally had it with the crazy stream on the diaper sprayer and asked my husband to freaking DO SOMETHING about it. So he did. He put in a valve that I can adjust to get just the right amount of pressure without blowing excrement around the bathroom.

Doesn’t come close to your story but: My 3yo is in the “Mama, I’m done poopin’!” stage of training. After I get paper, I have him lean forward over my arm so I can perform my bit. He’s eager to “help” however, and recently this took the form of him leaning forward, wayyyy forward, before I had my arm in place. He went keppa over keister and I somehow managed to grab ahold of the rounded tushie that was sticking straight up into the air… including a handful of unwiped ‘hole. Yay!

Ahhhhhhhh! This is the exact reason that my children don’t even know that the diaper sprayer sprays water. They just think it’s some sort of metal stick hose that hangs on the side of the toilet. Oh, the humanity! Poop in the mouth!

I was yelling “NOOOOO!!!” in my head while reading this (cause I’m at work). I’m glad you kept their names the same and that you asked them about it. Did you wash your mouth out with soap? Ick ick ick!

I just woke hubby reading this at 5am in bed!!! So so much ewwww!!!
You have put me off toilet training my Mini Miss! Sure, changing a 2yr olds diaper may be gross, but this is SO much worse!!!
I hope Crappy Baby “helped” clean up too?!!

OMG. I was in the middle of singing my lo a lullaby there, could not stop myself laughing in the middle of it! And again at some of OPs, LOL. Best post ever, including the pics. Thanks for sharing. And so sorry you went through that. Yuk.

ok – have to relinquish my crappy virginity (or something) to make my first comment – that post was effing HILARIOUS – laughing out loud – priceless! I got my toddler’s vomit in my mouth once – apple juice flavored – could have been worse – but never poop – at least not yet – excuse me while I find every possible wooden surface in my house to knock on… wonderful, wonderful blog – and I loved your book, too!

Haha that is something to look back and laugh at. And a big sign that it is time to say good bye to the diaper sprayer and small potty. I look forward to the post about how crappy baby has to use the big toilet now (no more bowls to wash out, but I’m sure something funny can come of it)

Too funny…we’ve had a bout of diarrhea in the house the past couple days, so I’m familiar with having it all over my person. Thankfully, I have not had to taste it. I never thought I’d have to handle so much feces in my life. I also caught myself sniffing something wet in the carpet today. It was either going to be spilled water, urine or diarrhea. Gotta know whether I can just dry it or have to get the carpet cleaner. It was water! Yay!

My first reaction was to laugh, followed swiftly by abject terror. My 28 month old is coming up to both potty training and “helping”. I have baby 2 due in a few months, and I’ve just realised it will coincide with these developmental leaps.
I think the only way to save my sanity is to keep lowering my standards before they are violated.

This is hilarious!!! It surely made me feel better about the frequency of having to clean the poop off the walls/toilet/child/sink/clothes I am experiencing lately as my 3 yo has stopped telling me he has to poop and is going stealth. Every time we have the same conversation, “you can not stand on the potty to poopy you have to sit down”

..and this is why I do without a diaper sprayer. sure I reconsider getting one when my pregnant self is bending over the potty, dipping foal smelling diapers into the swirling twister in an attempt to get the solids off, but then I realize that diaper sprayer would equal water laser to my 2 1/2 year old, and I go back to dipping;)

Wow, I’ve had some bad poop stories, and even maybe had the kids ruin the ceiling a bit by flooding the bathroom with the sprayer, but that just takes the cake (another bad expression for the situation)

FYI after the second bathroom flooding and millionth water fight we got a quick clip attachment for the bathroom sink faucet and a matching receptor on the diaper sprayer, now it sits safely under the sink until it is needed.

OMG…that is like my worst nightmare…poo mouth!!!
I was laughing so hard at the toddler assistance. You want them to help but yet it’s so annoying!
p.s. my son who is 3 just saw this blog for the first time and wanted to know why Crappy Baby’s head “is broken”. I tried to explain its actually his hair but he wasn’t having any of that…he wants his head to get “fixed” LOL.

Too funny! When my little brother was 4, my mom got a perm. A real ’70s perm, too… just bad disco hair. He took one look at her and burst into tears. “Don’t do that to your head!” Still hasn’t lived it down, but she hasn’t lived down the photographic evidence of the hair, either. 😀

My little guy just turned one (sniff), so I don’t have any personal experience with having a “helper,” (and I’m just going to repress your poop-tasting experience, because, ewwwww…..) but, I did see a cute little exchange in a liquor store a few days ago.

Me – kid in cart, buying the alcohol necessary to survive staying home with my child while my husband is deployed.

Other Mom: grabbing a *case* of some nasty generic canned beer off of the bottom shelf, with her little girl in tow.
4(ish) year old daughter: “Momma – I can help”
Mom: “Sweetie, it’s too heavy for you to carry.”
little girl: “hu-uh. I can do it.”
Mom: “ok. I’ll set it here on the floor and if you can pick it up, you can carry it.”
little girl: pushing/pulling/lifting so hard she is grunting.
Case of beer: not budging even a little bit.

My 6-year-old still tries to get away with getting me to wipe his butt for him with all kinds of random excuses: “I don’t like the thin paper!” “It’s too far away, I can’t reach it!” (though I find him playing with something on the wall just past the TP roll when I show up) and various other things like that.

I just found out yesterday that my son can form accurate, creative sentences about poop. “Mommy, uh oh! Doodoo on the floor! Doodoo on you hair on mommy shirt on my neck on blanket!” Yeah. I also found out that my accent pillows are machine washable, through trial and error.

OMG! That is so gross. Luckily, my son hated the child potty and has only gone directly into the big potty. I even bought one of the seats to go over the big seat of the toilet but he quickly outgrew that. He is a huge three year old. Just the other day he screamed that he was “Finished!” using the potty after he pooped. So in I went to help him wipe. He grabbed the toilet paper out of my hand and said “I try to do it!” I had a little party in my head that included margaritas, nachos, sombreros, dancing, the limbo, and falling down happy. Yep, all in my head. So I’m anxious to see if he’ll want to wipe himself again or if this was a one hit wonder.

This is why we got my daughter using the toilet itself before we needed to install the diaper sprayer for her brother. Also why we put the sprayer on the toilet in our bathroom despite it being further away than hers. I’m quite certain her dolls would get to take showers if the sprayer was on her toilet.

Naw. There will be another day to party soon. I had to wipe both my kids bums and they were able to master it by kindergarten. Now I only see their bums as they are headed out the door to be with their friends. LOL (They are 20 & 17 now) Treasure these experiences. 🙂

So gross! You must trade it out for one of those inserts that go over your toilet seat, with a hole so poop falls in, but baby butts don’t. Bonus: toddler still gets to pick it up and put it back. Cuz touching mini toilet seats is fun. It’s helping.

Oh, and am I the only one having that bittersweet angsty thing over the updating/maturing of Crappy Baby’s look? It’s the same lump in the throat I get when packing away Thing 2’s outgrown clothes. *sniff*

His smile when he was sweeping (you drew it perfectly) is why you can’t say no.

We have a sprayer (it’s Thailand, every house does) and even though I don’t like it myself, I love that I never had to wipe my kids’ butts. One quick spray and they were clean. They do their own now too, since it’s easy, and the little guy is only 2. I say ditch the potty chair and show him how to use the sprayer. Your future is now!

I die!!! Literally had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from sputtering a loud guttural laugh when I got to the picture of the explosion at face level because I am holding my sleeping baby and trying to avoid premature waking of said baby – we have a diaper sprayer for our CDing needs too….I know your pain!

Hahaha….when mine was two I had my In-laws over for dinner and while I was cleaning up with my mom in law my dad in law peeked in on my son watching cartoons so close to dining room and started laughing and said hey come see this. I went around corner my sin was smiling on my my couch (which had hand prints) and he had a chocolate ring around his mouth. No one at no time gave him a cupcake, cookie, candy or chocolate. I was so grossed out and my father in law just kept laughing.I picked him up gingerly and in the tub he went. Still gives me shivers lol.

Oh ma goodness. My daughter somehow shit out of her diaper onto my foot today and I was feeling gross about that. Poop mouth? I wouldn’t be able to deal with that. Feeling very lucky we skipped over the portable potties with my son!

OMG! This is freakin hilarious…I’m sorry, but it really is. It’s also absofuckinglutely disgusting at the same time. (and yes, that is a word…you can check the Charictionary). I personally just realized last weekend how lucky I am to have a daughter. I decided to have all of the little kids in my family have a sleepover at my moms house. It was 8 kids and two adults. Kids ranged in age from 3-14…pretty evenly divided. So, we are all out having a campfire and roasting marshmallows when the youngest boy who is a little more than 3 says he has to go potty. Mind you, my family is always full of drama and BS and no one talks to each other, etc. I’m always the one getting the kids together so they can play. (so much for keeping the kids out of it.) Anyway, this particular child happened to be my cousins’ son, who I’ve never really interacted with other than at birthday parties. Ok, so anyway, he has to go potty. I asked if he needed help and he said no. I asked if it was number 1 or number 2, he said it’s not a number Eenie (that’s me), it’s a poop, and it’s gonna be very stinky, I want you to come with me so you can smell it. (ummm….eww!) I said, I’m not coming to smell your poop, but if you need help, I’m right outside the door. 5 min go by and I ask if he still ok…he is. Another 5 min and he’s still in there. Again, I ask if he is ok, he is. Are you done yet? Not yet. Do you need help? No. Did you go potty yet? Yes. Ok, so what are you doing in there if you are done? Sitting on the tubby. (UH-OH, he had an accident???) Finally after about 15 min go by, I decide to go in and assess the situation. (Mind you, I’m outside the door the entire time he is in there singing and babbling.) I open the door and find him sitting on the edge of the tub. Fully dressed, not wet, no accident, nothing. But it sure as shit (no pun intended LOL) smelled like someone died in there. So I ask the last question I have. “what are you doing in here?” And he responds with “smelling my poop.” WHY???????? I mean, seriously it smelled awful. I had to open windows and use spray to get it to smell a little less toxic.
Boys are so gross!

So many items:
1. So disturbing, yet so funny. You have such a way with words 🙂
2. I cannot even come close to imagining having a conversation like this when I was in college. Unfortunately (for my conscience?) I can come close to what I would have thought about the mom discussing it. Oh how I hope I am less judgmental now.
3. My girls (5 and almost 3) “helped” me make muffins today. I couldn’t help myself from taking over at the end and pouring the batter into the muffin tin myself. They got to help a lot up to that point. Also, they asked Santa for brooms last Christmas, as if they saw me sweeping often. Well, Santa brought them, along with dustpans and small brushes, none of which I have hidden yet. Partially because the 5-year-old is actually pretty good at it.
4. What is the deal with pickles? Pickle is my 5-year-old’s favorite word, even though she claims she doesn’t actually like pickles. She kept telling her friends at school she would invite them over for a pickle party. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but we decided to invite them over anyway for a cookout. But the invite does say “pickle party.” I think we’ll have to play “guess how many pickles are in the jar” to make it legit.
5. I have those dreams, too. But very often I am in the back seat of the car (while it is moving, of course) and no one is in the front.

I didnt know this was going to be so long when I started. If you’re still with me, thanks. Mostly, thank you for keeping me laughing with your wittiness and unique story-telling ability.

Well, the author Michael Pollan would say this was a good thing. People need a wider variety of bacteria in their intestines, apparently, and there’s even such a thing as a fecal transplant for people who have serious, life-threatening bacterial imbalances.
I know this sounds like something from The Onion, but:

Oh no! That was so funny and I felt sorry for you at the same time. I didn’t think there were many things worse than cleaning poop. I stand corrected. Tasting it and then cleaning it are much, much worse.

OMG! The things us mommies go through! My “Crappy Boy” (who will be 4 in 3 weeks) announces he has to poop and then proceeds to yell out how many and what size! “I had 1 biiiig poop and 2 little ones!!!” And it always seems to happen especially loud when daddy is working from home and on a conference call LOL! We’re just entering the wipe-your-own-ass phase, and so far so good! Now if my 19 month old will start telling me he’s pooped before, instead of after, then I’ll be happy! Can’t wait to be done with diapers! Love love love your site by the way!! 🙂

LOL! Holy S***T! My own traumatic memories of diaper sprayer poop explosions just came roaring back. And this is probably why after we moved houses, I never got around to installing a new diaper sprayer. Now, how about the fact that little potties themselves actually make little sense after the kid is three and can clearly sit up on a big toilet and flush like the rest of us, but the 3-yr-old *won’t* because the little potty is portable and can travel throughout the house so that he never has to miss out on the latest Matchbox car adventure? Talk about precarious poop incidents…

My little guy has taken it upon himself to empty the potty sometimes – usually when no one is around. We have a sprayer too and though I haven’t seen him try to use it yet, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. I will think of this post when it inevitably happens to me!

While I was reading all these hilarious posts, my ancient dog pooped and trackd circles in it. Smooshed all over her nails, between her toes, in her fur, and on the concrete porch floor. Immediately decided against using a hose spayer – (I learn quickly, right?) No poopsmoothie for me, thank you! So I rinsed her feet in the goldfish pond. (Fish won’t notice; they poop in there, too.) I think poop is nature’s way of keeping us from getting too smug about being smart.

I am SO glad I do NOT have children. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!

Children are disgusting little germ machines. This is also why I refuse to use my teaching certifications. I had to wipe the ass of one yesterday. Repulsive. Sorry, Parents. I had to say it. I love children from afar and I love most child stories but EW!

Thanks to elimination communication from birth both my boys aged almost 3 and 14 months do not need potty training or to be asked to go potty (both started taking themselves as soon as they could climb onto the potty chair solo) however I still MUST be told they’re going and I don’t want them to stop because the few times they’re gone and had a quiet poop I’ve had to stop them from helping me by emptying the potty themselves.

On the sweeping. This is not the most environmentally happy option, but it is the most keep my sanity (or what I have left of it) option. I haven’t used a broom since my LO could walk (not quite 2 years now) because she would always go straight through the pile I was trying to sweep up. Ewww you may say, but instead I use a floor vacuum. I loooove it! There is nothing for her to walk through and since she also likes to be helpful she actually sort of vacuums stuff up instead of making a bigger mess. There was the one time something wasn’t quite right and it shot crap all over the place, but I’ll still take one time in almost 2 years of mess getting all over to every time I clean the floor.

This put all of my experience with bodily fluids in perspective. I have a diaper sprayer at home too, and we use it to clean ourselves as well as diaper, I can just imagine what my baby will try to do later when he is bigger… *shudders*
On a side note, I never had a ‘brakes not working’ dream, but it actually happened to me in real life. In an old rental, coming down steep rural mountain road, with sheer drop off into a canyon on the side. Luckily my sister and I could smell burning rubber and the brakes ddidn’t feel right, so I veered off into a side road to check. The car rolled 3 times the distance it normally would before it came to a stop and once it did white smoke just came wafting up from the overheated brakes. Stopped just in time. Still got chills thinking how close to death we were that time.

My son is five and I wipe his butt about 50% of the time now. I try real hard to not think about those other times. When I do wipe him, he bends waaaaay over at the waist and maintains his balance by hanging on to the outside of the toilet bowl as far down as his arms would go. I couldn’t figure out why he started doing that and then I remembered that I used to say, “Don’t touch me! You probably touched your butt with those hands!!” Poor kid. Though you would have thought he’d have figured out that touching your butt is not good, but sometimes I hear myself saying “I smell butt. Did you touch your butt?” And by butt I mean anus. Actually, the first time I said “I smell ass”, then realized that was a poor word choice. Sometimes he “checks” to see if he was cleaned well. And yes, I try to pretend he didn’t touch anything else in the house before I discovered the butt-smell. So gross.

Bahahahahaha! After 15 minutes of reading the post and comments, my husband finally told me I was getting annoying because I was laughing so hard and so much. He has no idea when he says “it can’t possibly that funny”. Oh yes dear, it can be and you should know better since we also have 2 boys.

I haven’t read these for awhile and am going through them this morning. This made me laugh so much that it is a good thing that Crappy Baby was nowhere near me with the sprayer.

My kids are quite a bit older than yours, but the helping/independence thing never completely goes away. My 14 year old in a burst of independence wants to cook more this summer and has asked if she can do more of the cooking. Of course I said “yes” even though I love to cook and hate to clean up and the cooking/cleaning ratio won’t be in my favor.

All this is leading to the final conundrum where if you raise them to be the kind of adults that you find delightful, they will want to leave your house, but if you fail in that, they will stay at home forever.

OMG… I just found your blog today and it’s EXACTLY what i needed. I had the worst nights sleep as illustrated in your “what it’s like to not sleep at night” post. After the lack of sleep I was dreading dealing with the kids and my resulting bad mood; but this has totally purked me up. This post made me cry with my laughter. My 3 yr old will grab his crappy ass as he runs by hollering “mom I’ve got to poop” no matter where we’re at. The only difference is I do not have a sprayer (prefer the liners myself). My 4 yr old is branching out into wipping his own crappy ass and the resulting mess is quite crappy! Oh to know that I’m not the only one dealing with such crappy kids is great. I’m loving your blog and off to see if my library will get your book in for me.

Our ancestors ate a varied diet according to what was available during
the changing seasons and different areas of the world. Danielle struggled with her own autoimmune disease for years before beginning her grain-free
experimentation. In a large pan, warm the coconut oil over
medium medium-high heat.